Unfortunately for us, we decided to do Tayrona the hard way. Lonely Planet told us that if we caught a boat into the Park we would be risking a fine ("or worse"(?!)) from the military, so we played it safe and caught a 45 minute taxi to the gates.
Once you arrive at the gates your bags are searched by the army (item by item) looking for drugs and alcohol. It would seem that the aim of the government (or rather the private company that owns 95% of the “National Park”) is that you buy these goods (drugs and alcohol) within the park at greatly inflated prices – not sure if this is a great use of the army's time.
After this, you pay a $20 entrance fee, and then you need to pay either for a bus or another $10 to allow your taxi to drop you off at the start of the walking trail. And so our taxi dropped us off at the top of a 40 minute path to the first beach where we would have a look for accom, but not be able to swim because of apparently bad rips.
This “path” was in the middle of the jungle, stinking hot and not maintained (thanks entrance fee). I found myself with a 15kg pack on my back, drenched with sweat, up to my knees in mud and dodging half constructed stairs. This hell continued for 2 hours, nearly double the amount indicated by the Park. At the very end of the path, it meets up with another path used for horses, and runs for another 50 metres or so. This section of the path is literally a bog. When we saw the horses chomping on their hay about 50 metres away and we could see mud lines up to their chests. This was not going to be fun. Mish ditched the thongs and set off, pulling her legs out of the mud one at a time, while I managed to clamber around the side in the relative safety of ankle high mud.
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| "Path" |
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| Interesting experience |
Our next challenge was finding somewhere to rest our weary heads for the night, which wasn’t difficult, but the options were rather disheartening. At one end of the spectrum was a $250 a night Cabana, which would not have been out of place in an Aussie trailer park, where it would go for no more than $50 a night – not a great option for a couple of backpackers. At the other end of the spectrum - it was $10 each for a hammock with a mosquito net, in a massive open sided hut, housing around 150 other hammocks. We went with the cheap option (which annoyingly was not even that cheap by South/Central American standards), This was going to be interesting.
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Hammocks make your legs lose feeling after an hour or so
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We deposited our stuff into a locker and practically sprinted for the nearest swimmable beach, about a 20 minute walk away. The setting in Tayrona is again absolutely stunning, rolling jungle hills descending to the beautiful blue Caribbean with only a small border of golden sand. Never before had water been so rewarding - almost 8 hours after we set off in the morning we could finally relax. And then, as we were settling into our newly acquired blissful state, I spotted a sea snake less than a metre from us and the moment was gone.
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| Beach near our hammocks - beautiful but no swimming |
That night we had drinks at an adjacent camp site, as we decided we would need a few to manage a kip in the hammocks. As we were finishing up there was a massive tropical downpour which continued through the night. We managed to sleep a little despite numerous bouts of losing feeling in our legs. And the frogs. And the mosquitos that got through the nets.
The next day we went on another hot, humid, muddy walk to the most beautiful beach in the park, Cabo San Juan. We had to walk along the rip-prone beach where we had walked the previous day, but this time with our packs. About halfway up the beach, there is a small stream which runs out to the ocean. The day before we had had found the shallowest part of the stream to walk through and so naturally we headed for it again. The water was slightly browner than the day before due to the downpour and looking towards the point where we were going to cross there was a rock that looked a lot like a crocodile. Mish was walking about 3 metres ahead of me and as she was about to step on the rock to start crossing the river I realised it WAS a crocodile. I screamed out to Mish that it was a croc and she froze for a second, before turning and running away. All I could thinkof was how fast crocodile could run on land and I just stood there staring at Mish’s footsteps, not more than a metre from the crocodiles’ head!
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| Photo of crocodile waiting for tourists on the beach (from a safer distance) |
There are many signs on the beach warning that it is unsafe for swimming due to dangerous currents, but no signs warning of salt water crocodiles - it was the first time we became aware that they lived in the park! We thought back on our out-in-the-open sleeping arrangements the night before and felt lucky!
After recovering our hearts from our mouths, we trudged along another path which was way longer than our guidebook suggested, and found a nice spot on Cabo to relax for a couple of ours before catching a boat back to Taganga (which we were surprisingly happy to see after the previous 36 hours).
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| Playa Cabo - niceness, at last |
Along the way the boat stopped at Playa Cristal – which was the most beautiful beach I saw in Colombia. Unfortunately, we only had 10 minutes to appreciate it before we had to jump back on the boat. The views from the boat on the way home were fantastic, with the intense green jungle meeting cliffs which plunged into the Caribbean.
We spent the next night in Santa Marta, a nothing little town, because we couldn’t get a bus back to Cartagena at a decent hour. But we sleep well!
